Adding to the pile of disposable state premiers

Tasmanian Liberal Leader Will Hodgman seems set to replace Lara Giddings as Premier this weekend.

ABC

When Steven Marshall and Will Hodgman turn up at the next COAG meeting as appears likely, they will have no reason to feel intimidated by the collective years of experience in the room, writes Barrie Cassidy.

It's a sobering reality for the incumbent Labor governments in South Australia and Tasmania that they face elections this weekend with the highest unemployment rates in the country and the longest periods in office.

That combination is deadly enough.

Now on top of that, consider how disposable premiers have become around the nation.

Since 2011, the six states have had collectively 11 premiers.

After Western Australia's Colin Barnett, Tasmania's Lara Giddings is the country's longest-serving current premier, and she's been there for just over three years.

If - or when - she goes, that distinction will pass to the Premier of NSW, Barry O'Farrell, who hasn't yet had time to re-contest his election.

The electorate can't take all the responsibility for the high attrition rate.

In NSW, for example, Labor held office for 16 years from 1995, but still put up four leaders. The same with Labor in Tasmania; four leaders since they came to office in 1998.

In the past three years alone, the ruling party has dispensed with three premiers: Ted Baillieu (Liberal) in Victoria, Mike Rann (ALP) in South Australia and David Bartlett (ALP) in Tasmania, though Bartlett said at the time he was quitting "for family reasons".

The voters chipped in with two victims of their own, Kristina Keneally (ALP) in NSW in 2011 and Anna Bligh (ALP) in Queensland in 2012.

That leaves you with an unusual situation.

This is when the serving premiers came to office:

Barnett (WA): September 2008

Giddings (Tas): January 2011

O'Farrell (NSW): March 2011

Weatherill (South Australia): October 2011

Newman (Queensland): March 2012

Napthine (Vic): March 2013

Only Colin Barnett has ever faced re-election.

Perhaps it's because of that sense of inevitability surrounding this weekend's twin polls - and the relative obscurity of the two premiers outside their own states - that the contests haven't generated a lot of national attention.

Federal Parliament hasn't sat this week, so that important forum was denied the political parties. But even so, it has been a remarkably flat week politically.

That must surely suit, and perhaps surprise, the Abbott Government. Here we are on the cusp of two state elections and a special Senate election in Western Australia, and nothing seems to be biting.

The manufacturing issue did travel outside South Australia, and so did the forestry debate in Tasmania, though even that might prove to be a bit of furphy.

But beyond that, we learned from Tasmania that while Will Hodgman can't box, he can put up a formidable political fight. We also learned that in South Australia, nothing is too low for a government on the way out.

The advertisements urging a vote against Liberal candidate Carolyn Habib (make that HABIB with capital letters, in case you missed it) were indefensible.

They depicted Habib as a silhouette against a wall riddled with bullet holes, a sinister image that implied cultural links to a strife-torn Middle East.

So unless the polls are widely astray, two new leaders will front up at the next COAG meeting: premiers Steven Marshall and Will Hodgman.

There to meet them will be one premier who has fought two elections, two others who have fought one, and another who hasn't fought any.

The newcomers should not feel overwhelmed.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC program Insiders. View his full profile here.